Fighters

For Palestrina Sicut / Seme

a film and sculpture by Quayola

with music by Max Cooper

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2024

Fighters is a film about the algorithmic genesis of Quayola’s latest marble sculpture and the expressiveness of new robotic gestures.

As a collaboration with electronic composer Max Cooper, this work is part of his new musical project Seme. Originally developed for its world premiere at the Salzburg Easter Festival, Cooper’s new music project has been themed around the passion and spirit of Italy.

Seme (seed) takes inspiration from rich Italian foundational aesthetics – combining elements of Italy’s history of music, science, philosophy and art.

Seme mines Italy’s rich cultural past to create a meditation on the form which yields us, and the world we live in.

Fighters draw inspiration from Michelangelo’s Captives (1510-1530), a series of never-completed sculptures which became emblematic for their expressiveness embedded in the exposed sculptural process. 

Quayola’s sculpture is also left unfinished, with the intent to document the aesthetics of the process itself, which becomes the true subject of both the film and the actual sculpture. 

The film celebrates the intrinsic poetics of algorithmic logic and robotics precision, as well as the heritage of sculptural traditions, Carrara’s marble and the historical quarry itself.

Fighters bridges digital and physical realms, sublimating robotic means and computational pathways into objects of contemplation.

Performing an archaeology of future-pasts, this collaboration between Max Cooper and Quayola investigates the tensions and equilibrium between history, heritage and ultra-contemporary technological languages and apparatuses.

CREDITS

a film and sculpture by Quayola

with music by Max Cooper

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Produced by Quayola Studio

SCULPTURE

Produced in collaboration with Cave Corsi, Carrara

Concept & Design: Quayola

CAM Design/Programming: Andrea Santicchia

Robotic Simulation and Milling: Robotor / TorArt

3D-Scanning: Digital Reality Lab

VIDEO

Editing: Quayola, Thea Ferraro (SoWhat Productions)

Editing Assistant: Giulia Olivieri

Production: Maria Elena Brugora

Drone Operator: Isabella Andrei

Camera Operators: Laura Veschi, Marco Petracci

Fighters: Denys Sliusar, Georgi Angelov, Georgi Petrov

Marble Quarry: Successori Adolfo Corsi, Carrara

MUSIC

‘Palestrina Sicut’ by Max Cooper

Composition / Production / Synths: Max Cooper

Additional Composition / Synths: Niels Orens

Vocalist: Sarah Aristidou 

Vocalist: Kim Sheehan

Additional production: Tom Hodge

Vocal Recording: Andy Ramsay

Additional Mixing: Aneek Thapar

Mastering: Chris McCormack

THANKS

Olivia, Giulio and Alessandro Corsi

Filippo Gargaglia and Borgo Prati